Patrick Daniel BarthProfessor Patrick Barth is Associate Professor at EPFL and Adjunct Associate Professor at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA. He received training in Physics, Chemistry and Biology (University of Paris, ENS) in France and performed his PhD at the Commissiariat a l'Energie Atomique in Saclay, France on structure/function studies of membrane proteins (photosystem I) using biochemical and biophysical experimental techniques. He carried out postdoctoral studies at University of California at Berkeley with Tom Alber on computational development for calculating protein electrostatics and designing de novo selective peptide inhibitors of cellular protein interactions. He then went to the University of Washington as a postdoctoral fellow and instructor in David Baker's laboratory to develop computational techniques in the software Rosetta for predicting and designing membrane protein structures. He started his independent career and received tenure at Baylor College of Medicine. He will continue at EPFL to marry computation and experiment for understanding the molecular determinants of signal transduction, as well as modeling and designing membrane proteins with novel functions for various synthetic biology and therapeutic applications.
Jean-François MolinariProfessor J.F. Molinari is the director of the Computational Solid Mechanics Laboratory (http://lsms.epfl.ch) at EPFL, Switzerland. He holds an appointment in the Civil Engineering institute, which he directed from 2013 to 2017, and a joint appointment in the Materials Science institute. He started his tenure at EPFL in 2007, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2012. He is currently an elected member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation in Division 2 (Mathematics, Natural and Engineering Sciences), and co editor in chief of the journal Mechanics of Materials. J.F. Molinari graduated from Caltech, USA, in 2001, with a M.S. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics. He held professorships in several countries besides Switzerland, including the United States with a position in Mechanical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University (2000-2006), and France at Ecole Normale Supérieure Cachan in Mechanics (2005-2007), as well as a Teaching Associate position at the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris (2006-2009). The work conducted by Prof. Molinari and his collaborators takes place at the frontier between traditional disciplines and covers several length scales from atomistic to macroscopic scales. Over the years, Professor Molinari and his group have been developing novel multiscale approaches for a seamless coupling across scales. The activities of the laboratory span the domains of damage mechanics of materials and structures, nano- and microstructural mechanical properties, and tribology. François GallaireNé le 26 février 1975, François Gallaire obtient, en 1998, le diplôme dingénieur de lEcole Polytechnique à Paris et, en 1999, un master en « Physique des liquides » à lUniversité Pierre et Marie Curie, toujours à Paris. Il rejoint ensuite le Laboratoire dhydrodynamique (LadHyX) à lEcole polytechnique où il soutient, en 2003, une thèse sur le thème des instabilités des jets tournants et sur le contrôle de léclatement tourbillonnaire sous la direction de Jean-Marrc Chomaz. En 2003, il est nommé chargé de recherche au CNRS au Laboratoire J.A. Dieudonné de lUniversité de Nice Sophia-Antipolis.En 2009, il rejoint l'EPFL pour y fonder le laboratoire des mécanique des fluides et instabilités (LFMI). Ses recherches se concentrent sur létude des propriétés fondamentales de stabilité des écoulements de fluides et sont guidées par les applications réelles, en particulier le contrôle des écoulements. Récemment, il a réalisé dimportantes contributions dans les domaines de la micro-fluidique (lanalyse de la manipulation par laser dune goutte dans un micro-canal) et la dynamique des bio-fluides (le descriptif mécanique de lanévrisme de laorte abdominale).
Philippe ThalmannPhilippe Thalmann was born in Lausanne in 1963. He graduated in Economics from the University of Lausanne in 1984, where he earned a postgraduate diploma in Economics in 1986. Mr. Thalmann entered the doctoral program in Economics of Harvard University (Cambridge, U.S.A.) in 1986, which he completed with a Ph.D. in 1990. His dissertation is entitled: "Essays in the Economics of Government Revenues and Spending". Returning to Switzerland, he was hired as an assistant professor first at the University of Geneva (teachings in Public Economics), then at the University of Lausanne (teachings in Econometrics and Introductory Economics). Since 1994, Mr. Thalmann is associate professor of Economics as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne.
